This poem is taken from PN Review 54, Volume 13 Number 4, March - April 1987.
At Thunderbolt's Grave in Uralla
i.m. Frederick Ward 1837-70
The New England Highway was formed
by Christian men who reckoned
Adam and Eve should have been
sodomized for the curse of work
they brought on humankind,
not drudgery, but work.
No luxury of distinctions.
None ever went to Bali. Some set out.
But roads were game reserves to Thunderbolt
when a bridge was a leap, and wheels
were laborious, trundling through the splashways.
There were two heights of people: equestrians
and those foreshortened on foot.
All were more dressed, because more naked.
That German brass band that Thunderbolt,
attended by a pregnant boy,
...
The New England Highway was formed
by Christian men who reckoned
Adam and Eve should have been
sodomized for the curse of work
they brought on humankind,
not drudgery, but work.
No luxury of distinctions.
None ever went to Bali. Some set out.
But roads were game reserves to Thunderbolt
when a bridge was a leap, and wheels
were laborious, trundling through the splashways.
There were two heights of people: equestrians
and those foreshortened on foot.
All were more dressed, because more naked.
That German brass band that Thunderbolt,
attended by a pregnant boy,
...
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